


It's a Small World, After All

by threewalls



Series: #kristineyeol [1]
Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Professions, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Romance Novel, Anonymity, Community: kink_bingo, Community: trope_bingo, Disney World & Disneyland, F/M, First Meetings, Fluff, M/M, One Night Stands, One of My Favorites, Other, Queer Character, Queer Het
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-31
Updated: 2013-08-31
Packaged: 2017-12-25 04:05:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/948424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/threewalls/pseuds/threewalls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>High-Flying flight attendant Kristine Wu doesn't expect to find her princess at Disneyland. (Romance novel AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's a Small World, After All

**Author's Note:**

> Written with thanks to BP and Mec. For my kink bingo square: "anonymity" and trope bingo square: "au: romance novel".
> 
> ~~This story is a prequel to something I started in January and haven't finished yet. (Kristine and Chanyeol will return!)~~
> 
> ~~EDIT (23/6/14): I am still writing another #kristineyeol story, but it's taking me a while. Feel free to subscribe to the[series](http://archiveofourown.org/series/55325) to be automatically notified when I do finally post more.~~
> 
> EDIT (1/1/17): I had plans for a lot more for these two and their friends, but I have to admit I don't know when or if I'll finish those stories.

Kristine moves to the back of the pre-show room, her non-existent ass pressed up against the wall. She's taller than practically everyone in here, so it's not like she needs to be right in front. Outside a fake window, there's a fake thunderstorm that's only getting worse. Lightning flashes and all the lights die, except for the TV. Kristine doesn't think she's actually ever seen an episode of the Twilight Zone, maybe late night on some cable channel, but she somehow knows the style, anyway, if vaguely. She's also visited Disneyland three times in the year since she started on long-haul flights, and this ride is one of her favorites. She lets the Rod Serling impersonator's speech wash over the edges of her attention, with no more attention than most passengers give the pre-flight safety information. She's here for the drop, the weightless thrilling fall of the ride.

The exit from the library opens up right behind her, putting Kristine first in the line. But then someone calls out something in Korean, and she looks across the milling crowd. It takes a moment for Kristine to realize that it was meant for her, that the guy looking hopefully across the emptying room at her is from 42K. 

He was quiet on the flight over, only water every time the cart went by and Kristine only remembers his exact seat assignment because she always does the pre-flight talk with the passengers seated in front of the emergency exits. And because her jump-seat on KE17 was directly across from him. 

Not that cabin crew check out passengers, and not that Kristine checks out boys. No matter how soft their mouths look.

The guy introduces himself as Park Chanyeol. Recognizing him from the flight throws her back into professional purser mode, so she gives him hers, too. Explaining the ride's plot should take all of about a minute, but Kristine gets side-tracked by the questions Chanyeol asks, turning the thriller plot of the ride into a tragic romance worthy of a late-night drama, the boy who loved the little girl all grown up, returning years later to the hotel where she disappeared.

They end up sitting next to each other in the ride. It seems less impressive than the last time Kristine came here, but maybe that's because her stomach had already dropped five stories the moment she noticed Chanyeol's leg was touching hers.

In the sunlight, it's easier to recognize him, even though whatever he did to his hair for the plane's been washed out in the five hours since their flight touched down in Los Angeles, so that it looks soft and bleached and fine. At least until he drops his black snapback over the top of it. He's still got a ridiculously pretty mouth.

Chanyeol's also a really funny guy, talking while they walk. He's almost as tall as she is, but it must be all in his body, because he's jogging to keep in step with Kristine's impatient stride. She doesn't notice that she's letting him follow her around the park until she's checking the line times for the new Radiator Springs Racers and catches herself pausing before joining the single rider line.

Thirty minutes later (instead of three hundred!), they actually get put in the same car, just not the same row: Chanyeol in front, Kristine in the back. He shrieks when the car leaves the dark section, shooting them out into the sunshine, racing down sharp canyon turns to the finish. 

They win, and even though Kristine suspects the race result is fixed, Chanyeol's grin is contagious.

* * *

The corn dogs at Corn Dog Palace taste fantastic, but they look way too much like, well, dicks for Kristine not to take tiny bites. Park Chanyeol wolfs his dog down like the idea could never occur to him. His mouth looks obscene. Kristine tries not to watch, but Chanyeol moves back into her line of sight whenever she looks away. Kristine can hear Zitao in her head like the laugh track of her life.

Because, ok, Park Chanyeol is a model. Only up-and-coming, or he would have been in business class instead of over the wing. He'd confessed when she caught him pulling up his snapback to touch up his hair with his fingers, his reflection faint in the clear divider above the serving counter. He'd flushed then, his big ears pinking adorably, and yet, right now, he's chewing the corn dog with his mouth open, telling her about running into a group of fans at Universal Studios in the spring - the one in Singapore, not the Hollywood Hills. He makes it sound cute, meeting three women his (older) sister's age, and posing for photographs with them that were on the internet before he got back to his hotel.

Chanyeol can't be trying to make her jealous. He can't be trying to pick her up. He didn't make a move on the plane, and Kristine's dressed down about as far as she can go right now. Just enough on her face to even out her skin and nothing extra around her eyes. She's dressed "boy", too, loose dark T-shirt over two tight sports bras and what they call "boyfriend" cut jeans, though Kristine bought them for herself in the menswear section. It's a far cry from the pressed fabric of her uniform or the padded underwire she wears with it. Maybe Kristine reminds him of his sister. 

She swallows the last bite of her corn dog and asks if he's expecting a crush of girls to leap out of the bushes. His ears go pink again, but his smile is blinding as he laughs and says that you never know! 

They creep between palm trees for a while, ridiculously obvious, but that is the point. No one knows him here. No one knows either of them here, just two people walking in the June crowds filling up the park. 

Kristine's at Disneyland's California Adventure on her own. Amber is visiting family and friends. Zitao had plans to hit Rodeo Drive and Kristine didn't trust the way somehow she always ended up buying him designer handbags or leopard print sneakers just because he called her "Kris-ge". She and Chanyeol are both alone here, and she wonders if he's got someone waiting for him back at his hotel, or a Skype date later in the evening. She can do the conversion to Seoul-time in her head. 

Waiting at the entrance to Grizzly River Run, Kristine texts Zitao to ask when he thinks he'll be back at the hotel, if he's likely to be back in time to want to try to catch dinner together. 

It's June and the lines are long on everything, but Kristine still imagines Chanyeol touching up his hair in the twenty minutes it takes for him to get back. If Park Chanyeol was into cock, Kristine knows he'd be exactly Zitao's type, except she's sure they'd fight over who got the most time in front of the mirror in the morning.

After the ride, Kristine's grey T-shirt is dark over her shoulders, sticking to the straps of her sports bras. She's not sure if he's checking her out, because she can't look at him without catching herself staring. After the spray from the ride, Park Chanyeol's white T-shirt is translucent.

Kristine hears Billy Crystal's voice piping out of the park speakers. She can't place the Pixar movie. Chanyeol grabs hold of her arm, running down the road. Kristine's longer legs have no trouble keeping up with him. He finds them a place to stand where they can see over everyone else. 

The sun is hot overhead, burning the back of Kristine's neck almost as hot as the place where Chanyeol had grabbed her arm. No big deal. He'd let go as soon as they made it to their places in the crowd. She makes herself watch the parade instead of Chanyeol.

* * *

"These tickets are good in an hour from now," Kristine says, handing him back a Fast Pass with his park ticket.

Chanyeol nods, lifting the hem of his T-shirt to slide them into a very tight pocket over his hip. 

"I want to go find a friend of mine an ear hat," Kristine continues, and Chanyeol is still nodding, lips pressed together. He points back towards the entrance to Paradise Pier, the last hat shop he's seen, but they have an hour and Kristine knows they'll find a better selection in Buena Vista Street.

They still have the leopard print and black gauze ones that she bought the last time she was here, and ones with little sorcerer's apprentice magic hats poised between the mouse ears. 

"Which character does your friend like?" Chanyeol asks, holding up a Goofy hat, long ears and all. 

He tells her about this fellow model that's kind of cold to people but laughs just like Goofy, like really, really, and then Kristine is telling him about Lu Han's Donald Duck obsession - which isn't equal to her Manchester United obsession, or she'd be with Kristine on more on the North American long-hauls instead of the European ones.

But it's Zitao Kristine wants ears for, and he's harder to put into some neat character box. "Jack Sparrow," Kristine says, "but more glitter and sequins."

"Lots of eyeliner?" 

Kristine shakes her head. "Lots of piercings."

"Like you?" Chanyeol asks, grinning. 

The next rack is Princess fascinators, bright pastels, metallic threads and plastic jewels. There's a Mulan one, red and gold brocade, a fan and cream satin lotus blossom. Of course.

"Do you want one?" 

"Mulan's not my favorite," Kristine says, and then because she can see the next question in his eyes tracking over the display: "Tiana. From the Princess and the Frog. The--" 

She points across the room to a rack of pale green ball gowns designed for the under-seven crowd.

"She's filial, and kind, and a fantastic cook," and Kristine would love to find a princess whose dreams she could make come true. 

"They don't... I don't see..." Chanyeol has walked around to the next rack, a frown on his pretty mouth.

"It's ok," Kristine says. Who knows what a Tiana fascinator would even look like, and she'd have to be drunk before she'd wear just a little golden crown. "I just want one for my friend."

What she buys is one of the gaudiest pair of Minnie Mouse ears she has ever seen, red and white stripes under gold piping and a long black plume curving up from the middle of the headband besides a glittery golden top hat. Chanyeol is the one who finds it.

"He's a guy," Kristine says, "but this is perfect."

Chanyeol beams at her, flashing his teeth. If he were a girl, Kristine thinks, he would be exactly her type.

When they're at the top of the stairs at California Screamin', a cast member is calling out "party of two, party of two?" 

Kristine puts up her hand.

* * *

The crowds are noticeably gathering around Paradise Park when they walk off the ride, even though the official lines for World of Color haven't opened. It's also getting dark.

"So, ah, are you hungry?" Kristine asks. "See anything you want to hit? They shut most of the rides around here when they get ready for the light show."

"Are you staying for the show?" Chanyeol asks.

"I think you need to get a Fast Pass in advance, like in the morning," she says, thinking about whether she wants to try for the swings or the wheel. 

And then she catches the polite shuttering of his face. 

Fuck, Kristine thinks. Fuck. He's been following her around for four and a half hours. She's been trying not to corral him in a disabled toilet for about as long. Fuck. What if they are on the same page? What if? Fuck.

"I'm staying until the park shuts," she says, too quickly, stumbling over the words. "The machine's back next to Grizzly River Run. You remember the way?"

It's June, summer season, but they somehow manage to get two Fast Passes for the Yellow section of tonight's last showing. It must be true that everyone is in Cars Land.

Kristine feels breathless even after they've stopped running. She buys them both hot dogs for dinner, because she is done with being subtle about how much she wants to watch a sausage she bought going into that pretty mouth. 

The lines on the Tower of Terror are even shorter because of the first World of Color show. They glimpse its sprays of color and light from the "thirteenth" floor, when the doors open to take their picture before that first faster than gravity drop. It's a better ride at night, the darkness more in keeping with the ride's mood. Kristine only rode it first today because she'd heard that Radiator Springs Racers was the ride drawing all the crowds. 

Kristine calls a restroom break after their third ride in forty minutes. When she get back, she spots Chanyeol at the photo counter and lingers behind a rotating rack of "personalized" key-chains until whatever he's bought has safely disappeared into his backpack. 

Back at Paradise Park, they end up with a position near the back, but there's no one between them and the rail at the front of their section and no one behind. It's startlingly empty, compared to the crush of bodies Kristine remembers from when she watched the show back in October. She had expected that excuse for touch, to be pressed up behind Chanyeol, but instead she waits until the lights across the water dim to reach over for his hand.

The show is about Disney movies, but more than that, it's about what the voice-over calls "love", but that makes Kristine dread the finale. Because of what "love" is in this show, a parade of princesses only ever kissing a prince. 

They don't make movies about kissing the girls who will stare after you walking in the school hallways but won't ever call what you do dating. Or moving halfway across the world to kiss girls who taste like cosmopolitans, tasting sweet in the bass-throbbing dark with their skirts pushed up over your head. Kristine's type has always been straight girls, or girls who want her cock anyway, but right now that doesn't confuse her as much as how much she wants to grind up against Park Chanyeol's ass.

He leans up and close to shout into Kristine's ear over the Pirates of the Caribbean theme how much he really likes the plumes of fire. There's no one around them, and the only person watching Kristine is Chanyeol, his smiling face lit up in red and then white. Kristine kisses him, and Chanyeol kisses back, angling his body into the arm she's already got curving around his waist. 

The park lights come back up while they're still kissing. Kristine jerks back, adrenaline in her gut that doesn't go away even when she remembers that it had been a boy she'd kissed. That crowds don't care about girls kissing boys in public.

Chanyeol's mouth is pink and glistening, and looking at him reminds Kristine of how much she wants to be kissing him still. His smile seems shy, and pleased, and he doesn't seem to think anything of Kristine not offering her hand or her arm on the walk to the park gates, her stride shortened to match with his.

They get two seats together on the shuttle back to LAX. He offers her one of the ear buds from his iPod. Kristine makes it through two songs before she spreads her hand on her thigh, flat and palm up. His hand is so warm in hers.

Chanyeol leans his head against her shoulder, insulated from each other's skin by the hoodies they put on waiting for the shuttle. She's not sure he's awake the entire trip, even if they're listening to a mix of love songs and rap. 

Kristine is tired but she doesn't dare close her eyes to rest. It's been a little more than twenty four hours since she met Chanyeol, since he was just 42K beside the wing, but it feels like the same day. She hasn't slept yet. She feels like Cinderella, aware that the magic is only for tonight.

* * *

Chanyeol is also staying at an airport hotel - in fact, at the same airport hotel that Kristine is checked into. She discovers this in the parking lot of Disneyland and has an hour and change to plan and drift with Chanyeol's heat pressed against her side. 

To wonder if she is moving too fast. (Yes.) To wonder what she wants to do with a boy, what these non-specific shiverings in her skin and her inability to concentrate in sight of his mouth even mean. (No idea.)

To wonder what she would do with a boy-- and that makes her think of girls smudging their lipstick on her silicon dick-- and that makes her think of Chanyeol's mouth on her cock. Kristine spreads her knees to sit more comfortably. 

She looks around the hotel airport shuttle to check if anyone has noticed how hot her face has got. (No.)

Chanyeol lifts his head, yawning up at her with so many teeth. He squeezes her hand. 

They're all the way standing in front of the elevator, the button pressed and outlined in glowing blue, when he asks: "What's your number?"

"Oh, uh, I-- I'm a sharing a room with a friend," Kristine says. Amber might or might not actually be sleeping in their room tonight, but the last thing she wants is to take Chanyeol up to the fifth floor to find out. 

"No, no, not your room number. Your phone number." His face is red, but that only seems to make his eyes glitter as he looks at her. 

"I'm not sharing a room with anyone," he says, which is all the invitation Kristine needs.

She leans forward to whisper, low: "Want to be?"

Chanyeol's hotel room looks exactly like Kristine's, except that the bed is a king, not two queens. But she's not looking anywhere but into his eyes. They haven't made it out of the little corridor beside the hotel room's bathroom, his arms up behind her shoulders, Kristine's hands everywhere below his waist. 

Kristine drinks in his kisses too sloppy in their eagerness, backing him up against the wall to get a knee between his legs, her hand slipping in between.

Oh. 

Wow, Kristine thinks. Girls don't come that fast when you rub their crotch through their jeans. 

Chanyeol is so pretty dazed with pleasure.

On his back, on the bed, there's a moment when he seems to realize that Kristine is doing all the work. She knows that expression, the desperation creeping around his determination. 

"I can--"

"You can lie back and look pretty for me," she suggests, aiming for a light tone, because Kristine doesn't want to try to explain "stone butch" to Chanyeol right now, or that she's never come the first time with anyone. 

She gets his arms stretched out to the sides, at least until she sits back between his legs and reaches for the hem of his T-shirt. 

"But you're a model." 

"Not a _naked_ model," Chanyeol protests, holding the hem down, but he giggles when she rakes her fingers down his ribs. He pulls his T-shirt off himself, throwing it away with a flourish.

Kristine covers his chest with her hands, stroking all the way down to his belt. It's a long way down. 

"I don't see why not," she tells him.

Kristine loves the way Chanyeol smiles. 

His skin is so soft and his mouth is so pink. He's a puppy arching into her touch, peeking at her through long lashes, flush across his cheeks. She wants to lie on top of him and lick him all over.

He's breathing faster, chest rising and falling faster under her touch, nipples she can feel more than see, but the same is true of his cock still zipped up in his jeans. Kristine isn't on the pill; she's not sure she wants his jeans to come off. Even if it keeps her from getting his bare ass in her hands. 

She rolls them onto their sides so she can reach around easier. 

"Your hands are so big!" he gasps.

"You should see my dick."

"Yeah?" Chanyeol says, and then: "I've got lube."

Kristine looks up from licking his ear so quick that she's staring at Chanyeol before his eyes widen as he realizes what he's just said. 

She only met him today but she doesn't like the way Chanyeol now looks pale instead of flushed. 

"My nearest dick is at my mother's," Kristine says. She hopes she's reading him right. "In Vancouver."

"Oh," Chanyeol says. "That's-- in Canada, right?"

They both laugh a little. Kristine can feel the looseness returning to his limbs, to her limbs, and something that is two hearts beating too fast to distinguish as they lie there pressed chest to chest.

"I didn't plan for this," she says.

"Me, either."

When she angles her mouth and leans forward, Chanyeol meets her halfway.

She kisses him more for the kissing than arousal, for hands and arms holding close instead of seeking to caress. It's been so long since she's kissed only for kissing.

Kristine's underwear is soaked through, almost uncomfortable; she may pass out as soon as she gets back to her room, but this whole, confusing, wonderful day is going to live on in her fantasies for months. Chanyeol's getting hard again, his lips more and more needy, his fingers digging into the muscle of her shoulders.

"If you do have lube," Kristine says, "I have some pretty big fingers."

* * *

Breakfast is Starbucks in the hotel lobby, their suitcases wedged in among their seats. Kristine feels so tired that she doesn't care about how bitter her coffee is. The warm press of the coffee mug is soothing against her mouth. 

Kristine thinks about the muscles of Chanyeol's ass fluttering around her fingers as he came. 

"Look at you," Amber says. "She must have been really something last night."

Kristine coughs, snorting coffee up her nose. Zitao makes an interrogative noise around mouthfuls of pastry, and Kristine looks down to find her plate empty. 

"I got back to our room after one, and it was empty," Amber continues. "Kris woke me up later stumbling in at I don't know when."

"Three," Kristine insists. "Three thirty at the latest."

She'd left before Chanyeol showered-- after she'd made him need a shower, shuddering undone under her. He hadn't clung when she'd said she had to go. He hadn't minded that Kristine hadn't taken off any of her clothes. 

"You only had half a day at Disneyland, ge," Zitao shakes his head, sighing. He's wearing the ear headband she bought him as if it were a necklace. "I'm glad I don't care that you're the most popular with the girls."

She'd woken up with her jaw aching and wishing she'd got any number from Chanyeol besides the one on his hotel room door. 

Kristine sets her mug down on the table, and leans forward just a little so she can dip her hand into her bag for her wallet. 

"If I buy two this time, will I get to eat one?" she asks.

Zitao holds up three fingers, smiling ever so cutely as he finishes her croissant. She'll find out whether he means buy three or buy him three soon enough.

Kristine joins the back of the line and hears the barista at the other end, the end that's closer to the doors that lead outside, call out "Tall iced tea, tall iced tea-- Chan-yol?"

It's him. It's Chanyeol, tight white pants and a beautifully tailored pale blue shirt. Kristine's in her uniform. They almost match.

But he hasn't seen her, picking up his drink and walking for the door. 

There are about twenty people either lining up or sitting or getting sugar or napkins or those little sticks for stirring their drinks in between them, and Kristine is in her uniform and that means she represents the airline. It takes her too long and too many apologies and her hope in her throat to work her way through the crowd.

But Chanyeol has stopped on the sidewalk just outside the café, one hand on his black roll-away handle and sipping his drink.

"So, ah, hey," Kristine says, because she is that suave. "How're you going?"

Chanyeol's eyes can get really big. So can his smile.

He protests that he didn't dress like this on purpose, that these are just the clothes he'd packed for the heat. Kristine chuckles, and somehow, it's just like yesterday. Just as comfortable.

Meeting your one night stand again is supposed to be awkward. It always has been.

Chanyeol tells her that he's in the States for a photo shoot in Las Vegas. (Vegas. In June. Kristine doesn't envy him. It's hot enough outside in LA and it's not even ten yet.) His flight leaves in a little over two hours. Kristine's scheduled on the 13:00 flight back to Seoul.

"Do you live in Seoul?" Chanyeol asks, and he sounds so excited.

"In Beijing," Kristine says. "But I travel a lot. To Seoul." 

Oh, dear. She wants to take him home again. She wants to buy him dinner again. She wants to hold his hand again. The time difference Beijing-Seoul is only one hour.

Kristine looks around for something to lean on, because her handwriting is terrible at the best of times, but she doesn't want to lean on the café windows and have to see what expressions Zitao and Amber have on their faces right now. 

"I didn't give you my number last night," Kristine says, holding out her receipt from Starbucks and the pencil from her pocket.

Chanyeol turns around, and taps the flat of his shoulder blade, the one without his black Calvin Klein back-pack hanging off. She wonders if his friends, his colleagues, are watching them. She didn't ask last night, but she's pretty confident that she's not his usual type, either. 

Kristine wonders if he can feel the press of her pencil through the paper and his shirt. She hopes he can.

"This is me on Skype," she says, handing over the receipt with her name and her username. Chanyeol takes it with both hands. 

"Kris?" he asks.

"That's what my friends call me," Kristine says, and she winks at him.

Someone else calls out Chanyeol's name. They both turn. Kristine doesn't know who to look for in the milling crowd, but Chanyeol must, because he looks so sorry. 

"I have to go," he says.

Her last sight of Park Chanyeol is him waving madly through the window of a cab as Kristine mimes a handset with her hand up by her face: Call me. 

It's twenty hours later, when Kristine's cleared immigration and waiting for a cab of her own on the other side of the world, before she has time to wonder if he will.

 

> Ayo what up, Kris!  
> Home on Friday. <3  
> Can call after 21 KST/ 20 CST  
> ???

**Author's Note:**

> You can also comment at my [LJ](http://threewalls.livejournal.com/368977.html) or my [DW](http://threewalls.dreamwidth.org/242966.html).


End file.
